It's a script to build a customized OpenWRT firmware that will automatically set up extroot on any (!) storage device plugged into the USB port (/dev/sda).

Why

So that e.g. customers can buy a router on their own, flash our firmware, plug in a pendrive, and manage their SIP (telephony) node from our webapp.

Status

This is more of a template than something standalone. You most probably want to customize this script here and there; search for CUSTOMIZE for places of interest.

I've extracted this from a project where OpenWRT nodes auto-provision themselves in 3 stages, but I thought it's useful enough for making it public (stage 1: extroot setup; stage 2: install packages; stage 3: a Python script for app-level sync).

At the time of writing it only supports a few ar71xx routers but it's easy to extend it.

Tested with

OpenWRT Barrier Breaker 14.07 on a TP-Link WDR4300.

Building

e.g. ./build.sh TLWDR4300

Results will be under build/OpenWrt-ImageBuilder-ar71xx_generic-for-linux-x86_64.

Usage

After flashing the firmware the router will have the standard 192.168.1.1 IP address, and SSH will listen there using the keys specified in image-extras/etc/dropbear/authorized_keys.

Once connected, you can read the log with logread -f.

The autoprovision script will wait for any /dev/sda to show up, then erase it and set up a swap, an extroot, and a data filesystem, and then reboots.

In stage 2 it will need an internet connection, so you should connect to its LuCI interface to set up an Internet upstream, and then it will automatically continue installing packages, finishing the whole process, and then do a final reboot.